Wrath of the Ice Warriors

Second Doctor Adventures #1.2

Released: 6 July 2022

Listened: 8/1/22

Having established a new and previously unheard of situation for the Second Doctor, Big Finish immediately decided to play it safe. So we have a team-up with the Brigadier, against the Ice Warriors. This Brigadier is from roughly the same point in time as the Doctor, so he hasn’t seen Ice Warriors, has never seen the TARDIS, and knows nothing about regeneration. (This explains, in part, why the Brigadier seems to know a bit more about the Doctor than he should when the Third Doctor’s era begins.) Andrew Smith is the writer, but he doesn’t really lean into his usual “bad guy isn’t actually evil” approach, at least not in the main. The story is set in Scotland, and Lucie Goldie provides a lovely Scots accent as temporary companion Sheena Flynn. John Culshaw plays the Brigadier with his usual skill, and the surprise guest for this one is Katy Manning playing Ice Warrior royalty. She somehow straddles the line of doing a perfect Ice Warrior while still managing to sound like Katy Manning, which may not have been what they were going for. Michael Troughton is slightly more comfortable in this story, at times sounding quite a bit like his father. Where the story really excels is capturing the Second Doctor’s essential “Doctor-ness,” the qualities that have informed just about every actor since: His curiosity, his flippancy at inappropriate times, his willingness to laugh at authority, and the confidence he exhibits when he’s found the answers. The moments when he gets the Brigadier’s call sign wrong (intentionally? who knows?) are a beautiful encapsulation of their relationship. The actual resolution of the plot is a bit of a let-down, because it’s been done too many times before. And there’s not much here to resolve the greater mystery of what the CIA wants with the Doctor, just a hint about future stories. But there will be future stories, and that’s to the good.